Tomdispatch.com began in November 2001 as Tom Engelhardt’s unnamed e-list of commentary and collected articles from the world press. In December 2002, it gained its name, became a project of The Nation Institute, and went online as “a regular antidote to the mainstream media.” It now posts Tom Engelhardt’s regular commentaries and the original work of authors ranging from Rebecca Solnit and Mike Davis to Chalmers Johnson, Michael Klare, and Elizabeth de la Vega. Nick Turse (who also writes for the site) is its part-time associate editor and research director.

Tomdispatch is intended to introduce readers to voices and perspectives from elsewhere (even when the elsewhere is here). Its mission is to connect some of the global dots regularly left unconnected by the mainstream media and to offer a clearer sense of how this imperial globe of ours actually works. It also has regular interviews with thinkers and doers Engelhardt admires. These are now collected in Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books, October, 2006).